Tommy,

The Trinitarian position is indeed quite disturbing. As I noted in my article "Why I Believe Jesus of Nazareth Is A Simple Human Person" in the Trinitarian view it turns out that no person, whether divine or human, was involved in the death of Christ. Since Jesus is said to be a divine person and is denied to be a human person in orthodoxy, then no person actually died, just an impersonal human nature. This must be the case, since a divine person cannot die and because there would have been no human person in Christ to die. This is the tragic absurdity of the doctrine of the two natures of Christ.

Zemirah,

I'm still awaiting your reply to my other post regarding your OP. I hope you don't disappoint me!

[quote=Zemirah]"The Trinity is one God revealed in three coequal coeternal coexistent distinct persons (not people) who share one nature."

"the unitarians read into these passages a meaning of “one person” reinterpreting monotheism to mean unipersonalism, although, there is no passage in the OT or NT, which clearly identifies God as “one person.”

"Unitarians are deeply confused between “being” and “person.” Simply, “being” (an ontological reference) is What something is, while “person” is Who something is. Scripture presents one eternal God (one Being) revealed in three distinct persons, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, naturally and historically, the Christian church has steadfastly held to and affirmed the glorious Trinity and preexistence of the person of God the Son, Jesus Christ."

What this post is declaring is that the God of scriptures is not a 'Who' but a 'What'. Yet all throughout scripture God is always referred to with singular masculine pronouns and never neuter pronouns. But from your perspective God is not a person but a thing. This thing called God is made up of three distinct divine persons. If this is true then none of the three persons are the one God, since the one God is not a person. The Father cannot be the one God, the Son cannot be the one God and the Spirit cannot be the one God, since they are all persons but the one God is not. If the one God is the thing that is made up of the three divine persons, then none of the persons is the one God. But is this the picture of God we get from scripture?

You say that three divine persons, i.e. three 'whos', who all share the same 'what' i.e. divine nature, equals one God. This is illogical. If there are three distinct human persons, i.e. three 'whos', who all share the same 'what' i.e. human nature, does that then lead to the conclusion that the three are the same human being. No, of course not - they are three human beings. Trinitarians, while vehemently denying tritheism present a portrait of God that smacks of tritheism. Simply denying that it does does not make the contradiction go away.

"The Trinity is Essential Doctrinal"

"Essential doctrine is any doctrine that involves the person, nature, and finished work of Christ (gospel). Hence, since Jesus is God in the flesh, second person of the Trinity, the nature of God is the utmost highest essential doctrine (Hosea 6:6; John 4:24; 17:3; 1 John 2:22-23)."


"Conclusion: The three distinct persons share the nature or Being of the one true God – only Regenerate will accept (John 8:43, 47; 1 Cor. 1:18)"


"The Three Biblical Truths: 1) There is only one God 2) There are three Persons or Selves that are presented as and called God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and 3) The three divine persons are distinct from each other."

"The three Persons are Distinct from each other: Angel of the Lord; John 1:1b. 17:5; Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 1:3; 2 John 1:3; Revelation 5:13."

"Passages such as Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 1:3; and Revelation 5:13 (and are many others) all distinguish the persons in the Trinity from each other. This is due to their grammatical construction—namely, the repetition of both the article (ho, “the”) and conjunction (kai, “and”)."

Matthew 28:19: “Baptizing them in the name of the [tou] Father, and [kai] the [tou] Son, and [kai] the [tou] Holy Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the [tou] Lord Jesus Christ and [kai] the love of the [tou] God and [kai] the fellowship of the [tou] Holy Spirit with all of you.”

1 John 1:3: “Indeed our fellowship is with the [tou] Father and [kai] with the [tou] Son of Him Jesus Christ."

It is hilarious that not one of the passages cited in this post actually teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, not one. The doctrine is simply assumed and then read into the passages. Like the mention of the Father, the son, and the holy spirit in the same passage, how does this prove the Trinity? Do you think unitarians do not believe there is a Father, a son and a holy spirit. What you need are passages that explicitly state that these three together form the one God. This you cannot provide because no such passage exists.

Zemirah,

Just curious, was anything in that post original with you are was it all from the sources listed at the end?

I have never, to my recollection, ever quoted that verse on this forum. But the verse is true, so beware!

[quote=TexaCan]He has been proven wrong several times on other threads! He makes the same false claims over and over again by creating another thread against the deity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity! IMO!

Do you think it is right before God to lie just because you think the thing you are lying about is harmful. No one on this forum has proven wrong any thing that I have written on my blog, and certainly not you. Once again I have to point out the obvious, that simply asserting that what I say is false and then stating what you believe is the truth is not equal to proving something wrong. To prove me wrong you must take each specific point made in the article and show why it is wrong; can you do that? I seriously doubt it, since if you could you already would have done so.

You do realize that the OT was the only scripture that Jesus and the apostles had and they considered it the very word of God. You cannot rightly understand the NT apart from the OT.

Why don't you do it. Go through the points I made in the article, one by one, and show everyone how they are wrong. If you can do it I will go away.

Most apologists and commentators assert that this statement by Jesus is a direct claim to be God. Can this assertion stand the test of close scrutiny? In this article I show why it doesn't.

https://letthetruthcomeoutblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/17/john-858/

Likewise, your above post was excellent.

Instead of simply asserting that it fails why don't you explain and show how it fails. Anyone can assert something but can you show your assertion to be valid?

Agency didn't have to be explained, it is assumed all over the Bible. This is why it is important to take into account the cultural context of scripture.

Many Christian apologists assert that the OT appearances of the 'Angel of the Lord' are actually appearances of God the Son. Is this true or simply a myth?

https://letthetruthcomeoutblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/pre-incarnate-appearances-of-the-son-of-god-in-the-ot-truth-or-myth-part-1/

Zemirah,

I don't know why I expected anything better from you than this, since you've never shown me any better.

"Who is this "we," Kemo Sabe? I have no indoctrination."

The "we" is everyone who reads scripture, because everyone, whether they recognize it or not, brings their own presuppositions to the text, including you. To deny this is to be dishonest. To say you have no indoctrination is either an outright lie or a profound naivete. The way you respond when your precious traditions are challenged is in itself a sign of indoctrination.

I provided not only quotes from Jewish sources, but 5 quotes from Christian scholars, which you conveniently ignored, and I can see why. Why are you afraid of knowledge? One reason people fear knowledge is because they might learn something that would upset their long held tradition, so they avoid reading or learning anything not from within their own circle of belief.

You said, "Common sense is also required to understand God's meaning." Yet you reject the common sense I presented in my post. It is clear that your hermeneutic does not include the cultural background in which the scriptures came to us or common sense; your hermeneutic seems to be to read everything through the tradition, never deviating from it in the least. This approach cuts one off from growth in knowledge of the truth because no knowledge can be allowed in that does not coincide with the tradition. How sad for you.

Thanks for the scripture verses you cited - I agree with them all of course.

Zemirah,

When we read scripture we tend to see what our presuppositions dictate we should see, or what our indoctrination has prepared us to see. So for you, when you read Is. 42:8 and John 17:5 your presuppositions dictate that you read it the way you do. Now this may be so subtle that one does not realize they are simply falling back on their indoctrination and so may really believe they are just taking the passage at face value. So I completely understand that according to your presuppositions you would read these passages as you do.

When one endeavors to free his mind from the indoctrination to which they were subjected they are able to look at scripture differently and to see what they could never have seen before when they were bound to see only their presuppositions. I once read these passages the same way as you because that was how my presup dictated I should read it. But now that I have been freed from such restraints I am able to see things in the text that I was blinded to before. This makes studying scripture a true adventure. Let me show you how I now understand these passages.

Is. 42:8 Here the word GLORY should not be understood as that visible splendor seen by ancient Israelites and prophets as light or fire or cloud. In this verse we have a case of synonymous parallelism, where the words GLORY and PRAISE are synonymous. This is how we know the word GLORY is referring to that which makes God worthy of praise. So what makes God worthy of praise? The answer is found in v.5 of the chapter - he created the heavens and the earth and gives breath to the people on the earth. This is distinctly God's glory, his claim to fame we might say, and this he will not share with any false god. Now this is what makes Trinitarianism so dangerous - the taking of the glory, i.e. praise that belongs to God alone and transferring it to another, a human being. When I hear Christians speak of Jesus as the Creator of all things I cringe because they are, no matter how sincerely or innocently, attributing to a man what belongs to God alone.

As for John 17:5, I can certainly see how, from your presuppositional perspective, you would read the verse as you do. But let me offer another way to see it. The part of the verse that appears to confirm your presup is ". . . with the glory I had with you before the world existed." What we have here is a thoroughly Hebraic way of speaking of predestination. To say that one "has something with God' is to say that God has that thing in store them. Matt. 6:1 says that we can have a 'reward WITH the Father in heaven' i.e. that he has a reward in store for us. Believers in Messiah can say that we have an immortal body with the Father because he has predestined believers to receive this and it is , as it were, stored up in heaven for us - see 2 Cor: 5:1. Now, of course, this is not to be understood in a literal sense, as if their are actual immortal bodies up in heaven waiting to be given out at the resurrection. It is to be understood as this is what God has destined or prepared for us to receive at the proper time. This way of understanding predestination from a Jewish perspective is well known by scholars, so let me quote a few.

From the Genesis Rabbah, a midrash on the book of Genesis, at 1.4 we read:

"Six things precede the creation of the world; some of them were actually created, while the creation of the others was already contemplated. The Torah and the Throne of Glory were created … The creation of the Patriarchs was contemplated … [The creation of] Israel was contemplated … [The creation of] the temple was contemplated … The name of Messiah was contemplated … "

From the Babylonian Talmud, Peshaim 54a, we read:

"Seven things were created before the world was made, and these are they: Torah, repentance, the Garden of Eden, Gehenna, the throne of glory, and the house of the sanctuary, and the name of the Messiah."

Norwegian theologian and professor Sigmund Mowinckel, in his work titled, He That Cometh: The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism, wrote this concerning pre-existence in Jewish thought:

"Attribution of preexistence indicates religious importance of the highest order. Rabbinic theology speaks of the Law, of God’s throne of glory, of Israel … as things which were already present with [God] before the creation of the world. The same is also true of the Messiah … in Pesikta Rabbati 152b it is said that “from the beginning of the creation of the world the King Messiah was born, for he came up in the thought of God before the world was created.” This means that from all eternity it was the will of God that the Messiah should come into existence, and should do his work in the world to fulfill God’s eternal saving purpose." p.334

E. G. Selwyn in his commentary on 1 Peter wrote: “When the Jew wished to designate something as predestined, he spoke of it as already ‘existing’ in heaven.”

Emil Schurer in The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, Vol.2 p.522 wrote: “In Jewish thinking, everything truly valuable preexisted in heaven.”

Catholic theologian Karl-Josef Kuschel, on p. 218 of Born Before All Time?, wrote: ” … in the synagogue a particular kind of pre-existence was always associated with the Messiah, but it did not set him apart from other men. This is pre-existence in God’s thought, the ideal pre-existence of the Messiah.”

Reverend Maurice Wiles, Professor of Divinity at Oxford, wrote in The Remaking of Christian Doctrine:

"Within the Christian tradition, the New Testament has long been read through the prism of the later conciliar creeds … Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God had a very different connotation in the first century from that which it has had ever since the Council of Nicaea (325 CE). Talk of his pre-existence ought probably in most, perhaps in all, cases to be understood on the analogy of the pre-existence of the Torah, to indicate the eternal divine purpose being achieved through him, rather than pre-existence of a fully personal kind."

So to say that Jesus had a glory with God before the world was is simply to say that he was predestined to a glory before the world was. Jesus, knowing that he was God's chosen one, knew that he was to receive a glory, a glory to which he was predestined. He knew that this glory would only be attained once he had given up his life in obedience to the Father's will and now having come to that moment he calls upon his Father to fulfill his predestined end. Jesus is not asking for some glory that he had formerly to be returned to him - the text does not say that- nor is he asking for the glory that is distinctly God's as the creator. He is asking for the glory that is distinctly his, as the Messiah, to which he had been predestined, to be given him after he fulfills his part. Is. 42:8 really has nothing to do with John 17:5, they are speaking of two totally different things.

I hope you can see how this passage presents no problem to a human Christological view, when understood within the cultural context in which it was written